Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 277
November 29, 2012
Links for 2012-11-28 [del.icio.us]
@Focus on the Family ... Kids making lists? Dreaming of big things? Here's some help -- so the kids can make some really great Christmas lists this year ...
November 28, 2012
Free Family Advent Christmas Devotional with Jesse Tree Ornaments
When we haul a tree in the front door and untangle the lights on the darkest days of the year and look hard, keeping looking hard, for the star for the very top —
I think I know what I want for Christmas.
I don’t want a Christmas that you can buy.
I don’t want a Christmas that you can make.
What I want is a Christmas that you can hold.
A Christmas that holds me, remakes me, revives me.
I want a Christmas that whispers — Jesus.
I want a Christmas that lives and breathes and moves in Jesus Christ.
I want for the God in the manger who makes Himself bread…
For the Saviour in swaddlings who makes Himself our robe of righteousness.
For the Christ who makes precisely what none of us can — Christmas.
It is only Christ alone who can make Christmas.
So that’s what we lay out under the tree, this Jesus Advent Devotional, this story that begins in the beginning, in Genesis, and sweeps across His Word and His-Story, that winds through some of the highlights the Old Testament, stories that keep murmuring it — He’s coming, He’s coming.
That when we’ll bend the knee come December 25th, we’ve run our hands and hearts along the whole spanning epic story of the why and how and Who of this coming, from the Garden to Noah to Jonah to Ruth to David to Zechariah to Mary to Bethlehem
And we’ll feel the divine breaking into here and we see the light shattering dark and we’ll find what we’ve looked hard for, everything we’ve ever yearned for —
Christ –
and we”ll bend and we’ll whisper — We have beheld
and are held.
: : :
Might we give you the free gift of this Jesus Advent Devotional?
Each of the 27 days of the Jesse Tree Family Devotional journey includes: (There are 27 days of devotionals — so begin the last week of November — so that you finish up by December 25th!)
1. The full Bible text of the day’s reading in either NCV or NIV (of course, feel free to read from your own Bible, if you’d prefer another translation.) Readings are selected to begin in Genesis and cover significant events throughout the Old Testament — each story pointing to the coming Messiah. It’s like an overview of the whole span of His Story — leading right up to the climax of the coming Christ!
2. A devotional read-aloud for the whole family – engaging enough (we pray!) for young children and yet meaty enough for teens and adults.
Each reflection endeavors to not only highlight an important scene from God’s epic in time, but to always unwrap more of Jesus, the gift hidden in every story.
3. a short, simple action point for the day– “Unwrapping more of His love in the World” — a way to do something together as a family that not only invites the coming Kingdom of God and Jesus’ love into your home and community, but is an opportunity to apply and live out the day’s devotional. It’s like an Advent Calendar that gives back – becoming more like the gift Himself!
4. a free full color ornament,, illustrated by Nancy Rodden and used with permission, to hang on your own Jesse Tree. The very last pages of the book include all of the ornaments in over several pages so you can easily cut each ornament out and creatively mount to your own preferences.
5. black & white Coloring ornaments, if your children choose to color ornaments, while you read the devotional?
{You are welcome to print the booklet out for your own personal use only; we only humbly ask that the book be printed in it’s entirety, text/images not altered. To use the devotional outside of family (church settings, etc.,) please contact us .
Sample Pages & Free Ornaments from the book :
::::
The book and ornaments are our grateful free gift to you!
To thank you. For all the ways you’ve cared and encouraged and written notes and prayed for us this year. Though I can’t always express it well to each and every one, know how our heart swells… Our whole family, we truly appreciate you.
So from our heart and home to you and yours this Christmas season, may our family offer this book to you as our humble, imperfect little gift? May we all find our home in Christ year round.
Christ has unwrapped more of His love to us every day– through you.
So utterly grateful,
Ann Voskamp & The Farmer & family…
To receive the link to the Free Jesse Tree Advent Devotional:
If you’ve already made yourself a friend and subscribe to daily updates from this site, just look to the bottom of this post in your reader or email — and you’ll see your gift link to the downloadable free Jesse Tree Advent book right there.
If you would like to receive a link to the free printable Jesse Tree Advent book, don’t by shy at all or stay a stranger –
Become a friend and quietly tap in your email address and the link to the e-book will be delivered directly to your inbox, in the footer of each updated post:
Enter your email & the link to the Jesse Tree Book will be delivered directly to your inbox in the footer of each blog updateOr, if you’d rather, the link can be delivered through your favorite reader. Sign up for updates to this site via the RSS feed to your favorite reader. (The link to the downloadable Jesse Tree Journey book is tucked in to the bottom of each blog update.)
Our Warmest Welcome, new friend!
Thank you for the humble gift of your friendship. It’s a humble grace to walk together… Christ came to do that exactly that with us…
Merriest of Christmases, one and all…
Perhaps there’s encouragement too for you in these Advent thoughts?
Three Very Simple Ways to have a Peaceful Advent
What Jesus Really Wants This Year for His Birthday
::
::Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
Links for 2012-11-27 [del.icio.us]
... @CBD ... CBD tells us that you can order the jacketed hardcover, One Thousand Gifts just for today, Tuesday, for $5.99 -- a $5.99 gift that's really One Thousand Gifts? Just wrap with a bow?
The difference between asking how I can pray for you and praying for you | (in)courage
@ (in)courage.... this. this.
November 27, 2012
How Beards & Men & Random Acts of Kindness Can Change the World
I can’t ever say that kissing him before was painful.
I mean, nothing about him ever scratched abrasive and rough, nothing like the grit side of an unused emory board, the backside of a knot of burrs.
The man just grabbed me around the waist and most days the warm side of him feels only like a few days growth, like he’d be tough enough to drive those whiskers right in and gnaw them off on the inside.
Something about a man for the fields, for the underside of a truck, for the bare nape of a woman’s neck bent there at the stove, for nothing too buttoned up formal.
But a wild bushman beard? Facial hair that grew up the side of the face like a bear, like a beast, like a burly man? What makes a man stand shoulder to shoulder with another and call him brother?
He says he wants to grow the beard for Ted.
“How can you be 55 and have prostate cancer? And Ted, he’d do anything for anybody. How many years has the man spent his Sunday afternoons driving hours up to the prison to share the gospel with guys up there the rest of the world would rather forget about?” I nod yes, of course, throw out the razor and join the men and do it.
It isn’t easy for a shy man. I find it later on the screen, how he’d googled Movember and how to best shape a ‘stache. I love him for it.
The men all line up at the front of the sanctuary and smile silly and send the snapshot of their scruffy mugs to Ted as he lies under thin cotton sheets and heals.
The Farmer doesn’t love it when the red corn dust gets caught in it or doing up barn chores and feeling the mealy feed chop trapped in it. When he comes in from the shop, he washes his face up again — he says it feels greasy. Clumps of hairy men stand around after the Sunday preaching and compare growth. He mutters it getting into bed: “You just try not shaving your legs for a month and see how that feels.”
“Oh, but I have!” I have no shame. “I’m a farm girl from Canada — I spend half the year in long johns.”
I nudge him into this half surrendered grin and the backwoods man tussles me close: “You daring me to kiss you, huh, huh?”
And I laugh loud and long and I love him for it, him loving me and doing it for Ted. All of life is messy. And there are no islands in the Kingdom of God. And what we think of outsides doesn’t matter like what we love of insides…
Then the last Sunday in November, Ted’s well enough to come out.
And the men all stand at the front of the sanctuary, the farmers and the missionaries, the truck drivers and accountants. Jack Werner is 18. Bill Shore is 77. One has a white ‘stache and the other, a blonde goatee and one’s standing at one end and one at the other and all these men in between being knees and arms for Ted. Jonathan Moore points out balding Bob Purcell with his dark mo and says that Bob’s wife, Sue, has been calling him Tom Selleck. Bob blushes and the congregation chuckles and white-haired Sue, she cheers.
And the pastor offers, “I got my best compliment of the month on Friday night when a few of us, we went down to the city to see a hockey game.”
It was the pastor, the youth pastor, the national director of a global mission organization, the Sunday School Superintendent, a church elder and the Farmer.
“As we were walking toward the arena, I was the last one past this bus stop.” The Pastor unconsciously smoothes out his moustache, like he’s pressing it all out. “And as all of the guys here from the chapel passed by, I hear one of the teens nudge his buddy, “Whoa. Look at these guys. Looks like we’ve got —- wait for it —- a bunch of narcs.”
My mama laughs too loud and Mrs. Martin shakes her head and a bunch of country Bible preachers with their sideburns and whiskers looking like narcotic agents?
And Ted’s laughing too, Ted brave and young and old and hunching a bit at 5 foot 6.
His cheek look gaunt and hollowed and his eyes look strong and certain and cancer can stalk a man but nothing can steal your joy unless you hand it over. Jonathan Moore hands Ted the microphone.
“It’s been a hard year.” Ted’s voice trembles just a bit. I look down at the floor. “Marilyn’s brother died there in the spring,” he nods toward his wife, “and Jeremy had that crazy car crash and then there was Jenna’s wedding in the summer.” I glance over at Marilyn. Hasn’t she taught Bible club for 20 years?
But their Jenna doesn’t come on Sunday mornings anymore. Not after she married a Muslim man she met at university and wrung Ted and Marilyn’s hearts right out. And Ted and Marilyn, they never stop loving for a moment, love’s always this willingness to suffer.
“Then this fall, the doctor tells me I have a cancer.” And I’m nodding and brimming and how does one small man keep standing large when the pounding surf just keeps slamming on? When the chemo makes you sick and the pain of living makes you hurt and the days make you ache just a bit? How does one family keep standing when it all keeps beating hard the kids break your heart and the bills keep stacking and your weary of climbing straight up hill? How long, oh, Lord, how long? How does Ted still smile? And he turns to the men all standing behind him.
“But you guys?” Ted’s voice cracks a bit. “You guys standing with us when it is hard. The visits and meals and prayers.” He’s choking it out.
“And all your beards and ‘staches and solidarity — that you’d care enough, like this?” The tough looking guys on the on the platform, they’re cracking a bit too, and Ted, he can’t say what everyone’s feeling, but he gets out this.
“I just can’t thank you enough.”
And there it was — what that French friend told me I of Thanksgiving and how it translates in French.
That Thanksgiving in French is action de grace.
Action de grace.
Ted’s thanking these men who went unshaven for him, men who are standing like real men around the Lord’s Table and the memory of Him giving thanks and breaking His body and being shorn for them and I’m thinking Action de grace and how do we love those who are finding it hard to live?
Do this in remembrance of me.
When grace rescues you, then giving thanks is the responding action.
When grace delivers you, then action defines you.
When grace takes you in right where you are, then you act out your gratitude wherever you are. 365 days of the year.
Random acts of kindness is the action plan of God’s people.
Thanksgiving is action de grace in French — and after Thanksgiving comes Christmas and after grace comes action, and we don’t occasionally give thanks to feel good but we live thanks to routinely do good.
The men stand with Ted. We stand with the hurting and the hurting don’t stand alone and our thanks is the kind that finds ways to give.
We break bread. We remember and taste and become the grace of Christ.
Ted whispers it to a man at the door — Thanks again.
Again.
And that night, the Farmer brushes with this kiss in the light of the Christmas tree, Christmas coming after Thanksgiving.
This thanksgiving that never ends, this touching of each other’s rough places with tender actions of grace.
and counting more of the One Thousand Gifts
that never end… thanks for Christ who says to give thanks, to do this in remembrance of me: #4618 – #4628:
his beard … Why Gratitude isn’t just for Thanksgiving … young men standing with old men… Ted and a church family who makes their thanks give… boys who say their Dad looks great and girls who giggle over whisker rubs… this for just one day … and this … my mama and I sitting together quiet, not need words… spaghetti squash with meat sauce and candle light … finding one last bag of a favorite tea and pouring out a few cups to share… that every day might can be action of grace.
Join us? And happily change everything by keeping your own crazy list of One Thousand Gifts?
Please, jump in, make your life about giving thanks to God! — Just add the direct URL to your specific 1000 gift list post… and if you join us, we humbly ask that you please help us find each other in our refrain of thanks by sharing the community’s graphic within your post.
Give thanks to the Lord! His Love Endures Forever!
*Names all changed & photo creditClick here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
Links for 2012-11-26 [del.icio.us]
@Nancy Franson.... "I stopped counting when I reached 1000. Why I'm starting again." This woman. Soul Beautiful. Yes. yes. yes.
Free Christmas book: Touching Wonder
@DavidCCook.... We've used this book by John Blase as a family read aloud for the last several years. And this week, it's a free ebook! There are very few writers the calibre of John Blase and this book will, yes indeed, help recapture the awe of Christmas...
They were once all 18 too....
... kids and I watching this made me tear up happy. Each face here, so beautiful. {Pick up the phone and call someone older today?} (HT: Kathie}
What Should Children Read?
@ NYTimes ... thought-provoking....
November 26, 2012
{Just a whisper from the snow on the farm: Doctor appoint...
{Just a whisper from the snow on the farm: Doctor appointments today … Join in tomorrow with a 1000 gift link-ups? And a story from this weekend that made me laugh joy!}
“Nothing is a given. Everything is a gift.”
{Enjoy your day, friend, & all His gifts! Tis the Season… }Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
November 25, 2012
Links for 2012-11-24 [del.icio.us]
@Sports Illustrated ... had me so smiling. What a journey --- beautiful!
Basketball Christmas Carol?
... oh yes -- music everywhere! ;) The kids loved this one!
November 23, 2012
5 Fab Things For a BRIGHT Friday {Friday@the Farm}
5 Fabulous Things …
that are sort of like when pigs fly! Or — when the Farmer about kisses a cow!
Happiness for a Bright Friday:
1. Healthy Fudge? In the Slowcooker? 5 ingredients? Why, yes please! Perfect and easy family sweet for the weekend!
2. All together now:
Free Christmas Music?
15 Ways to Make a Fragrant Home through the Holidays?
Simple Memories for this Christmas?
3. One Thousand Gifts for 5?! A jacketed hardcover for $5? Well, sure, why not happy loveliness? Give 1000 gifts in just one gift? Just wrap with a bow. @ Family Christian Stores (and online too) (with free shipping!) on Friday…. and @ Lifeway Stores Friday and Saturday (in stores — and maybe online too?)
4. This! Advent!
“Celebrate God all day, every day.
I mean, revel in Him!
Make it as clear as you can to all you meet that you’re on their side, working with them and not against them.
Help them see that the Master is about to arrive. He could show up any minute!”
5. Music out of nowhere? Or everywhere? Tis the season for listening for it everywhere… and becoming it!
{Consider pausing the music icon just to the right. RSS readers may view the happy here }
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth. Give Thanks. Become the gift.
May the grace and truth of our Father surprise you all over again this weekend, friends!
Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
Links for 2012-11-22 [del.icio.us]
@ Desiring God .... "Here’s the true story of thanksgiving in four stages." This post. 5 minutes for the internet today? Spend them all here...
Free Thanksgiving Party Collection ...
.Perfect for the Kids' Table... for He is good!
November 22, 2012
Finding The Perfect Gift {Free Holiday Printable}
…. (excerpt)
But now had arrived
and unwrapped like a gift —
The embrace at the door,
the loud laughter in the twilight greying,
the clock ticking down after the still —
all unearned —
her here at all.
So after the turkey and Aunt Eileen’s pie, she’d written it down and taped it up,
to remember when everything would spin fast for the more —-
how they had had already received Godsends,
how a Tree had hung with Love and redeemed everything and now felt like glory in her lungs,
how they had so much to be thankful for.
” ‘Give thanks’
& give is a verb, something that we do:
That our thanks-giving might literally become thanks-LIVING.”
The entire storied post is over here todayClick here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
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